This is the Monday Medley, a newsletter that goes out, you guessed it, every Monday. I republish it here for sharing and referencing, but if you'd like to sign up you can do so right here:
Happy Monday!
I went to Minneapolis over this past weekend, so I had some extra time for reading and finding interesting things for you.
First up, new on the Growth Machine blog is a post on Key Performance Indicators for search-focused content marketing. This is a question we get a lot, so here's how we think about tracking performance, especially in the early days.
And on the Growth Machine podcast, I talked to Mike Colavita from Fat Buddha Glass about how he's been recovering his site traffic after being decimated (literally) by a Google update.
I also finally added my more detailed notes on Letters From a Stoic to The Brain. It's been a minute since I added anything new there... really need to get my book reading back on track.
Alright, on to the Medley!
📱 The Twitter hack that happened the other week is a good reminder of just how fragile our digital security is. If the CEO of Twitter can get hacked on Twitter, anyone can. I wonder, too, why the people who manage to hack into these accounts don't do something more interesting with them. If they had tweeted something like "we've been discussing it internally and have decided to ban Trump's account" that'd be a MUCH more interesting prank.
🗣 Speaking of Trump, JP Morgan now has a "Volfefe Index," meant to measure and trade on the market volatility caused by Trump's tweets. Not a terrible idea, really.
👫 And over in Facebook land, there's now "Facebook Dating," which had been trialed in a few other countries before being rolled out in the US. Honestly, as much as I hate Facebook, this seems like a pretty good use case. Until it gets hacked and everyone's secret crushes get revealed, Ashley Madison style.
😞 Feeling isolated may put you at higher risk of suicide as it increases "death thought accessibility." One thing I wonder with this kind of research is how much digital connection "counts." It's definitely not the same as seeing people in person, but texting, talking, facetiming, has to count for something.
🧠 In some good mental health news, John's Hopkins has opened a new psychedelic research center with $17M in funding behind it. If you've been on this newsletter a while you know how bullish I am on psychedelics in general, so this is a really exciting development. Apparently Tim Ferriss is responsible for rounding up half of that $17M, too.
💰 WeWork's IPO value has dropped to less than half its valuation at its last funding round. It would be brutal to come into work and discover that all the options you were so excited about are suddenly worth only half what they were the day before. This is a good example of why it's frequently a bad idea to take equity over cash, unless you can get in very early.
🖥 Basecamp bought some hilarious ads to showcase how silly it is that Google will show ads for your brand name above your own site. I'm pretty surprised those ads got through review.
🚴♂️ There are special "hyperreality" spin classes you can do in China and they look absolutely insane. I can't imagine how people don't get sick or fall over with that much action going on in front of them.
🙇♂️ Here's something I've been realizing more lately. The better you get at something, the less sense it makes for you to learn other things.
🙅♂️ Denver passed a law banning bump stocks and asking people to turn them in, and so far... none have been turned in.
❓ Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, has a good list of unanswered questions on his site.
🦝 These raccoons got themselves drunk off of, it seems, fermented fruit. I think it's pretty funny how many animals enjoy getting high in different ways when they have the opportunity.
💍 Marriage rates are declining, and it might be because there are increasingly fewer economically attractive single men.
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Have a great week,
Nat